Hello!! Today, I will be talking about Fast-Food!!! I realised lately I have been craving McDonald’s and when they came, I started to take notice of the amount of packaging used for takeaway of the food items. So I went to take a look and I found out the the food industry is a major contributor to environmental pollution! With the increase in urbanisation and larger cities, this leads to more people and ultimately more food production to feed these people. Today I will be focusing on the detrimental effects that the fast food industry has on the environment!
Back in 2005, the fast food industry accounted for roughly half of all restaurant revenues in the developed countries (Warsi and Nisa, 2005). Now, according to a report that shows the forecast of the fast food industry from 2020 to 2027, the global fast food market is expected to reach $931.7 billion by 2027 with the increase in fast food chains globally (Business Wire, 2020). So why is fast food so detrimental to the environment you may ask? Here’s a video to give you an idea of what goes into making your favourite burger!
Source: Youtube (Reveal, 2012)
As seen from the video, it was revealed that a major contributor to environmental pollution was production of beef through agriculture and livestock. The livestock industry is projected to contribute around 70% of the total allowable greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (McGrath, 2019). These emissions include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) which are naturally released by animals such as cows, pigs and chicken (Dopelt, Radon and Davidovitch, 2019). Furthermore, production of animal products also produces a lot of water wastage and water pollution. Water pollution is caused by runoff water from these farms into water bodies that contains manure, antibiotics, hormones, fertilisers and pesticides (McGrath, 2019).
The meat of focus in the video and in fast food restaurant is usually beef. The production of beef has the highest water footprint as seen in the figure below. Not only that, it is estimated that ‘a farm with 2500 milking cows produces the same amount of waste as a city with 411,000 residents’ (Dopelt, Radon and Davidovitch, 2019).
Average Water Footprint of Beef, Pork and Chicken (McGrath, 2019)
Hence, it can seen here that the production of fast food (focus of this blogpost is beef) can produce copious amounts of waste that causes air and water pollution. Just a note, this only comes from livestock pollution!! In the next blogpost, I will be addressing about other forms of pollution that arises from the fast food industry!
Reference:
Business Wire. 2020. Fast Food Industry Analysis And Forecast 2020-2027 – Researchandmarkets.Com. [online] Available at: <https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200716005498/en/Fast-Food-Industry-Analysis-and-Forecast-2020-2027—ResearchAndMarkets.com>.
Dopelt, K., Radon, P. and Davidovitch, N., 2019. Environmental Effects of the Livestock Industry: The Relationship between Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior among Students in Israel. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(8), p.1359.
McGrath, M., 2019. Fast food giants under fire on climate and water usage. BBC, [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47029485>.
Warsi, K. and Nisa, S., 2005. Food Retailing: Fast Food Industry. SSRN Electronic Journal, [online] Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228136941_Food_Retailing_Fast_Food_Industry>.
Video:
Reveal, 2012. The Hidden Costs Of Hamburgers. Available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3URdEzlKQ&ab_channel=Reveal>
Feature Image:
Wikipedia Commons, 2014. Reddot Burger. [image] Available at: <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RedDot_Burger.jpg> [Accessed 8 November 2020].